A couple of times this year at the movies, I’ve found myself thinking about one of the great lines from one of the great movies about the movies. “Wallace Beery! Wrestling picture! Whaddya need, a road map?” So goes the snappy one-liner from Michael Lerner’s cynical studio executive in the Joel and Ethan Coen masterpiece Barton Fink, and so it echoed in my head as I sat, disappointed, through two different-but-not-exactly genre films.

In April, the film was Rampage. Last week, the movie was The Meg. I left the film feeling a bit like Lerner’s character, chastising the pretentious Barton Fink. These movies should not have needed the road maps.

Dwayne Johnson is officially starring in so many movies that the Honest Trailer for his video game adaptation Rampage has arrived the exact same week that his new action thriller Skyscraper hits theaters. That might just be because Screen Junkies is trying to capitalized on all of the chatter surrounding The Rock now that he has a new movie coming out, but Rampage does come to Blu-ray and DVD next Tuesday, so it all kind of works out.

Anyway, the Rampage Honest Trailer does exactly what you’d expect it to do with a video game movie that has one of the weakest stories, some of the cheesiest one-liners, and truly awful dialogue. Oh, and did we mention the action sequences are totally bonkers? Read More »

The Morning Watch is a recurring feature that highlights a handful of noteworthy videos from around the web. They could be video essays, fanmade productions, featurettes, short films, hilarious sketches, or just anything that has to do with our favorite movies and TV shows.

In this edition, director Brad Peyton breaks down a scene from the video game blockbuster Rampage. Plus, examine whether some blockbuster movies can hyped to the point that they can’t be anything but disappointing, and watch a Harry Potter inspired gymnastics routine by an Olympic athlete. Read More »

Dwayne Johnson is serious about making sure audiences have a good time in his movies. He’s so serious about it, in fact, that he came very close to walking away from Rampage, his new film based on the classic video game that’s currently in theaters. Read about the Rampage original ending and why Johnson was so adamant about changing it below. Read More »

Warner Bros. is finally close to cutting all ties with Brett Ratner‘s RatPac Entertainment. In November of 2017, sexual misconduct allegations surfaced against Ratner, which lead Warner Bros. to rush to sever ties with the producer and filmmaker. Still, several projects still lingered that tied RatPac to Warners. Now, that time is almost over.

I can’t tell whether there’s too much rampaging in Rampage, or not enough. The only thing I am sure about is that it takes too long to get to the rampaging. Rampaging is, after all, the number one thing that Rampage has going for it — exposition and set-up aren’t exactly the draw of a movie like this.

For anyone for whom the title isn’t a sufficient description of what you’re getting into, suffice to say that Rampage is a good old-fashioned monster movie. A mysterious serum gets cooked up in a lab in outer space via CRISPR gene editing (which is a real thing), and when things on the station go awry, canisters of the serum plummet down to Earth. Those canisters, in turn, infect a few animals, causing them to grow in size and throwing a few other genetic mutations into the mix. And then, well, you know.

Most of the time, press conferences for big blockbuster movies are opportunities for the actors to crack a few jokes, share a fun story or two about making the movie, and that’s about it. It’s rare that anything actually substantial comes out of these Q&A sessions, but the press conference for Rampage, the upcoming film adaptation of the video game, was a little bit different.

During the conference, actor Joe Manganiello (who plays a mercenary in Rampage) revealed that star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was in talks to lead a Dungeons and Dragons movie, and Johnson confirmed it. Read about The Rock Dungeons and Dragons connection, the Rampage movie’s special homage to the video game on which it’s based, and more below. Read More »

At this point, you know what to expect in a Dwayne Johnson movie. Big explosions, even bigger pecs, and lots of testosterone-fueled male posturing — probably in the jungle, and probably while the Rock is wearing the same khaki shirt he’s dragged across five movie sets.

Johnson has nailed a type, and he’s got an audience willing to pay top dollar to see him to it again. And from the looks of Rampage, it’s very much the same action-packed blockbuster we expect to see from Johnson. But that doesn’t mean it’s not good.

Blockbuster king Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson probably has another hit on his hands with the video game adaptation Rampage. Early Rampage tracking indicates the disaster film will take in a cool $35 million for its opening weekend. In other words, it’ll do better than Baywatch.